The City of Learners: Post-Secondary Collaboration in Edmonton, Alberta

The six major publicly funded post-secondary education (PSE) institutions in Edmonton, Alberta, are embarking on a new era of post-secondary collaboration, working together to:

• address barriers that prevent residents from accessing post-secondary education
• market Edmonton worldwide as a learning destination
• develop community infrastructure to support lifelong learning and economic diversification and development

The message that the public PSE institutions in Edmonton want other PSE leaders to hear is that much more can be accomplished in their communities by replacing a mindset of “differentiated independence” within the public PSE sector with a sector-wide culture of “complementary interdependence.”